My first Late update. I'm sorry for the delay, but my internet decided to abandon me in times most crucial. Anyway, here's the twelfth chapter.

In a parallel universe, where I happen to be JK Rowling, I will own Harry Potter. Meanwhile, in this universe, I am displeased to inform you that I am not the owner of something so amazing.

Keeping it Real

Marlene rushed out of the great hall, where kids were eating chocolates relentlessly. Mary and Dorcas were right behind her. She began to tramp off towards the west tower, teeth gnashing.

"Where are we going?" asked Mary, hurrying behind her.

"Gregorian Tapestry – that's where I saw Lily disappear briefly," Marlene said quickly.

Marlene was a bit annoyed with Lily – why on earth hadn't Lily told her what she had planned? Why the marauders of all people? She had a completely single minded purpose of finding and fishing out this piece of gossip. She turned a corner quickly, only to find a dead end with a couple in passionate embrace.

The couple quickly broke off, looking faintly embarrassed and red in the face. The brunette grimaced at them, as if she was trying to say sorry for something. But that was absurd – why would she need to be so embarrassed unless she knew them.

"I really didn't mean to – so sorry guys – I mean girls, but I just-" she began in a apologizing tone, while the boys shoved his hands down his pockets and grinned ruefully.

"Alice?" asked Dorcas disbelievingly.

Marlene gasped. Was that Alice Prewett, head girl of Hogwarts? Dallying around with a shady boy in a corner whilst the rest of the school was in ruins due to the chocolate massacre?

"Oh my god, its Alice Prewett!" exclaimed Mary.

"Of course it is," she blushed, "You don't need to address me – we're friends!"

It was true. Alice Prewett was a friend. She was one of the girls in the seventh year who had bonded with them during their third year in Hogwarts while she was trying to escape a wild badger (don't ask me who let the wild badger in, I doubt Dumbledore would have the answer to that one). She had spent plenty of time with all of them, especially Lily, since Lily was a prefect now.

"And who is the lucky boy?" asked Marlene eagerly, thoughts distracted from Lily.

The dark haired boy stepped clumsily from the shadows. Frank Longbottom – head boy of Hogwarts - had been born with two left feet. It was known.

Dorcas gasped in much the same way Marlene had a minute ago. "But you said you're only friends!" Dorcas accused.

"Of course I did," she said with a toothy grin, "Too proud to admit I liked him, wasn't I?"

"Well I never!" Marlene exclaimed. She turned to Dorcas. "What do we infer from this little situation?" she asked triumphantly.

"I don't see what you mean," Dorcas said huffily.

"Really? You want us to spell it out to you?" said Mary uncharacteristically. Marlene winked at Mary cheerfully, and grinned at Dorcas. "Doesn't this remind you of your friendship with Benjamin?" asked Marlene.

"No it doesn't!" Dorcas said immediately. "And we have to find Lily!"

Mary jumped out of the moment. "You're right," she said quickly, "Alice – there happens to be a crisis in the great hall, you better go. We are going to get Lily."

June scurried off into the dungeons, and burst into caretaker Adrian Pringle's office. Pringle happened to be jumping around the office preparing to leave for the Great Hall to manage the mess.

"Who are you? -" he sputtered, but June raised her wand quickly and muttered, "Confundo."

Pringle went stiff and dreamy eyed almost at once, and June began to concentrate. She had done confundus charms before, they weren't really challenging. But people's lives depended on this. The way Professor McGonnagal was talking insisted that being found in the teacher's archives – whatever they were – was going to be dangerous.

Besides that, June didn't know anything about the teacher's archives – suggesting something very ominous. June knew everything in the school, catching herself unaware was something to be worried about.

"Yo-you will go to th-the teac-teacher's arch-archives, and loo-look confused," she began gently. This had to be impressed properly in his brain. Thankfully, his brain proved to be very soft and impressionable.

"Yo-you wi-will say that yo-you had co-come chasi-chasing a kn-knight of cho-chocolate." she continued, "You wi-will say yo-you set the al-alarm off. Yo-you will tell the prof-professors th-that you had been amb-ambushed by the kni-knight and locked by h-him. Any-anything they as-ask you which re-requires and affir-affirmative, yo-you will gi-give. If the pro-professor's are al-already there, you wi-will say no-nothing. You will for-forget this happ-happened."

she lowered her wand. Pringle nodded quickly and stomped off. June took a few deep breaths, and crossed her fingers. It was a long shot, but it may work.

"Hurry Lily," James muttered fearfully. Lily nodded quickly, beads of sweat falling from her hair. She flipped through the file at the cost of her fingers, which were burning away. Once satisfied, she picked up one of the file copies from the floor, and went to James.

"Are you guys done?" asked Sirius from inside. His voice sounded more and more like Sirius himself.

"We need to get rid of these copies," she whispered to James.

James wasn't faring better. He had become tall and lanky again, his voice going back to the normal huskiness. 'Huskiness?' – Lily questioned herself. Since when did she think James' voice was husky?

In any case, Lily began casting a shield for her fingers, as they were burning badly. "We're keeping it real! You guys get out!" she said loudly, struggling with her wand.

"You sure?" came Remus' voice.

"Positive! Take James with you!" she called out.

"I am not going anywhere!" James said agressively.

"This is no time to argu-" Lily began but was cut short ruthlessly by James, "Exactly. No time to argue. Go Padfoot. Meet you at the Gregorian Tapestry."

The siren was loud and distracting, but Lily heard their footsteps die away. She heaped the other copies at the risk of her fingers, but James stopped her. He levitated the bundle together, and asked her, "What now?"

"Burn them," Lily said, barely breathing with pain. She knew vanishing them was no good, but burning them might help. Traditional muggle ways paid off sometimes. James nodded quickly, and set fire to the pile. Lily levitated a single copy of the file so that it won't burst into multiple copies and waited impatiently. Teachers would be coming any minute now.

Marlene reached the Gregorian tapestry, only to find that there was no one there. She ripped it aside forcefully, and saw a small painting of a man on a donkey.

"What?" she said loudly. "No! She always disappears here!"

Mary put a hand on her shoulder. "I think she might be in the dungeons."

"Why?" asked Marlene wildly.

"Because I saw that girl June Leto go there."

June reached the entrance hall slowly, heart beating in anticipation. Any minute now there might be an announcement telling everyone to calm down and that some students had been found playing a prank to get to a restricted area. She hoped that didn't happen.

"Hello, Miss Leto," came the mild voice of Albus Dumbledore.

"Uh... er... Hel-hello," June muttered.

"If I may miss Leto, I think I would like to congratulate you," he said with a twinkle in his eye.

"For wh-what?" asked June stupidly.

Dumbledore examined his nails with great curiosity. "I doubt I know anyone your age who could pull off that bit of magic." he said idly, as if he was commenting on the weather.

June said nothing.

"Yes," Dumbledore continued thoughtfully, "I wonder what Lily Evans said to you that brought about this courage."

June gasped again, and watched with renewed horror as Dumbledore winked and strode away to the Great Hall. The gasp hadn't come from the fear that he knew about her friendship with Lily - anyone who knew her (which equated to no one) would know of her friendship with Lily. The gasp had been in protest that Lily had said anything to bring this about.

You see - June's new found courage stemmed from Sirius Black's harsh words.

The copies were burning away to glory, and Lily kept watching them, her fingers twitching. James gripped her shoulder gently, and levitated the copy they had kept for themselves carefully.

They heard an echoing sound of footsteps.

Lily bit her lip.

June had entered the chaotic great hall after Dumbledore to find that he had calmed a bit of it down. Alice Prewett and Frank Longbottom were helping in the cleaning.

June wondered if anyone else knew that they were dating.

But June didn't have time to ponder on that. She was watching Dumbledore twitchily, her eyes darting first to him and then to the doors of the great Hall.

The copies had burnt themselves to ash, and James had vanished them away with the vanishing spell. He held her hand and hurried them out of the record room, the file they had kept levitating eerily behind them. As soon as they slipped out of the door, he pocketed the file quickly and rushed to the exit.

Adrian Pringle burst in, looking completely disoriented. James watched with horror as he caught sight of the two teenagers, and waited for Pringle to arrest the two of them.

But he did nothing of the sort. Instead he just stomped about aggressively, yelling nonsense to the air.

James inched away from the center table and he and Lily slipped out of the archives, hardly believing their luck.

On a hunch, James locked the door of the archives from the outside.

Eight Thirty (2030 hours) Great Hall

"Ah, Minerva," Dumbledore strode over to professor McGonnagal.

"It's alright Albus," she said in a low voice. Lily's eyes were perked and she was listening. "Pringle says he was chasing one of the knights and he set the alarm off."

Lily heaved a sigh of relief. But what had prompted Pringle to save them?

"Do you believe him?" asked Dumbledore bemusedly as if he was teasing her, "He could be confunded."

Minerva McGonnagal shrugged her shoulders, clearly playing along with him, "It would take an exceptionally powerful confundus charm to hide away all the tell tale signs of a confundus charm."

Lily knew without a doubt that a confundus charm had been performed. But who had been nice enough to do it for them?

"Besides, the door was locked from the outside. Pringle says the knight locked him in."

"Alright then Minerva," Dumbledore said cheerfully, "The crisis here was contained as well. I think our conspirator was a well meaning student who wanted to give a Halloween treat to everyone. And it does check with the story that Miss Evans and her friends had been chasing a knight in the west tower."

Lily had wildly improvised there. She had simply picked up on the babbles of all other students and put together a reasonable story. Somehow, everything had fit in like a giant puzzle piece.

Marlene, Mary and Dorcas had come up to her and confronted her. She had explained that they had sneaked around to get June's records. It was the truth – or part of it, anyway.

"I don't believe you Lily," Mary had said exasperatedly, "You have submitted every essay on time for fear of punishment, and yet you were ready to steal records of a student!"

Lily squirmed.

"Never mind that," Marlene said despondently, "Lily is the bad girl now. I'm losing my touch."

Dorcas made an impatient noise, "Really though Lily, that was incredibly reckless."

"I just wanted to see if her records existed anyway," Lily said guiltily, "She doesn't seem to exist for anyone else."

"Still though, did you think of asking her?" Mary asked in an annoyed, while Marlene simply stared at the table, sad that Lily had outdone her (Dorcas had melted away when Benjamin Fenwick had entered the hall). "I doubt you'll find anything interesting in it anyway. She seems like a nice girl to me."

Lily said nothing.

"What happened tonight?" asked Remus.

That was perhaps the most practical thing anyone had ever asked. Sirius and Peter gave a quick recap of what they had done after leaving the archives. Remus similarly recounted a tale involving a chocolate suit of Armour. James told them of how he and Lily had made it out of the night.

Lily took a deep breath before she began. She explained the number of copies of the same file made, and then how they had burnt all copies except one. She told them of Pringle's odd behavior. She told them about what she heard professor Dumbledore say about confundus charms. She told them Marlene, Mary and Dorcas' narration about the chocolate knights.

"This has certainly been an odd night," Remus said mildly. Understatement.

"You can say that again," said James.

"Lets try to make sense of everything that happened," Sirius suggested slowly.

"Pringle was obviously confunded," Lily said immediately, "It was a good charm. If we hadn't seen him enter and act disoriented, then we would have never known. Professor McGonnagal couldn't tell."

"Powerful charm then. Question is, who did it?" asked Remus. Lily hadn't the slightest idea. She knew only one person who could perform magic good enough to do that, and she was out of the question.

Sirius however understood June Leto far better than Lily did. Even though he didn't know the girl from eve, pure intuition told him that June had done this. And the one sole reason he knew she performed the charm was that she got away with it.

"And what about the chocolate knights?" asked Peter slowly.

"They were a good distraction point. Certainly helped us," James said.

"Exactly!" said Lily suddenly. "Too much coincidence. Who is helping us?"

"Or it could be a prank." Remus said reasonably. "Lord knows James and Sirius would have enjoyed doing that."

"Actually – that was exactly what I though!" James said happily, "Its just our style!"

Sirius grinned enthusiastically, "I enjoyed that. I really did. I wish I was there for the action."

"Okay then, I suppose we can pass the prank off as a prank," Lily summarised, "Who performed the charm though?"

All of them shrugged.

"Anyway Evans, you got what you wanted, we got what we wanted." Sirius said quickly. "The terms of the alliance are kept."

Lily nodded just as quickly. The file in her bag was weighing down on her. She knew that June's records existed. There was no need to pry. She would get rid of the file and find out about the silent girl on her own.

They dispersed.

The aftermath of Halloween was manifold. Lily Evans and James Potter became friends, and started spending time together regularly.

Remus Lupin and Marlene McKinnon had formed just as odd a friendship.

And Sirius Black stole the file Lily had thrown away from the dustbin in the kitchens.

Ummm... I did give you a cliff hanger alert, didn't I? Maybe I am stretching your curiosity points. Next chapter will be posted in three to four days time.